(October 6, 2023 at 11:00 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: The consensus builds a very strong case for mythical or legendary characters at absolute best and then throws it's hands in the air declaring it good evidence for historicity instead.
We watch Paul himself create a character with the traditional Jewish aversion to blood who nevertheless asks his followers to drink his blood, Greco-Roman mystery cult style, if only in a symbolic sense, and we would normally be inclined to go "AHA! GOTCHA!" but Paul, in his undisputed letters, says he met this same fellow's brother. And the existence of that brother is supported by Josephus. Then later the proto-orthodox tradition that became pre-eminent in the Jesus movement developed a tradition that Mary was ever-virgin, so they attempted, Stalin-like, to erase James from history. But today mythicists tell us the same adherents of the proto-orthodox view added interpolations mentioning "James the brother of the Lord" to every extant copy of Galatians and Antiquities of the Jews. That takes us into grand conspiracy territory, and the same impulse that led to my atheism makes me critical of mythicism.
